Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Brian Boyd wrote in Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years that Nabokov compulsively smoked Gauloiseswhile writing but after visiting a physician due to heart palpitations Nabokov was advised to give up smoking. To ward off the nicotine cravings he started "...compulsively devouring molasses candy..." and subsequently gained sixty pounds. Nabokov shared in a Playboyinterview, "I became as stout as Cortez-- mainly because I quit smoking [while writing] and started to munch molasses candy instead, with the result that my weight went up from my usual 140 to a monumental and cheerful 200." According to Secret Lives of GREAT AUTHORS Balzac often wrote for fifteen hours per day while drinking fifty cups of Turkish coffee. Unsurprisingly. it's suspected that the copious amounts of coffee contributed to his early death.Compared to Balzac, I drink a meager five to seven half cups of coffee per day, often while writing, with one teaspoon of organic cane sugar; however, when I decided a month ago to forgo the sugar I subsequently lost a considerable amount of weight. I went down a shirt size and two belt loops!Thus, be careful about what you snack on while writing.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Emily Witt related in a New York magazine “Intelligencer” article that publishers have
started referring to Young Adult (YA) literature as New Adult (NA) literature.
Per the American Library Association (ALA), a young adult is someone
between the ages of 12 and 18-years-old. But is content that is “appropriate”
for 18-year-olds “appropriate” for 12-year-olds?

This
funny, smart novel follows the friendship of three 16 year old girls [Angela
Silver Madigan, "Maddie" Kinnick , and Zoe Barrettas] they experience
some of the typical pitfalls of adolescence: boys, queen-bee types, a flirty
teacher, beer, crazy parents, and more. Lauren Myracle has a gift for dialogue
and characterization, and the girls emerge as three distinctive and likable
personalities through their Internet correspondence. This light, fast-paced
read is told Entirely in instant message format, the first book ever for young
adults to be written so.

Here are some content that I found
surprising and wrote about in this “runaway” best-selling book written for teens:

Margaret, Angela’s high school friend,
knows how to squirt.

Margaret desperately wants to have a relationship with a
bohemian Georgia State University (GSU) student, but she didn’t realize
that 15-year-old Angela had a crush on the collegian as well.

It excited Angela to
fantasize about her classmate's "summer sausage" while she did
her homework.

15-year-old Maddie danced
topless on a table at a GSU frat party as camera phones snapped away.

And in terms of the teacher/student relationship, Zoe was initially
attracted to Mr. H, her English teacher, because, "... he's NICE. cuz
he treated me like i was a person instead of a kid. that what was so great - we were
just ppl having a discussion." Zoe and her teacher went out several times, but when
Mr. H invited Zoe to join him in the hot tube wearing a pair of Speedos,
he "paralyzed" her and she ended the relationship.

Apparently, some parents
didn’t think that ttyl was
“appropriate” for 12-year-olds, because the book is on the American Library
Association's list of books parents want banned.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

A short story based on a harrowing month long event that I recently experienced

A smallnon-fiction volume about an aspect of New York City

An essay on the striking similarities between monks and pimps

And a volume of verse

Thus, like the protagonist in Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, I feel pregnant with books.

As I say, the day began gloriously. It was only this morning that I became conscious again of this physical Paris of which I have been unaware for weeks. Perhaps it is because the book has begun to grow inside me. I am carrying it around with me everywhere. I walk through the streets big with child and the cops escort me across the street. Women get up to offer me their seats. Nobody pushes me rudely anymore. I am pregnant. I waddle awkwardly, my big stomach pressed against the weight of the world.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Brian William Koppelman, the co-writer of Ocean's Thirteen and director of Solitary Man, has a very inspirational, set in Manhattan, Vine that he films for (screen) writers.

In his latest Vine he gives his followers the "secret sauce" to success in Hollywood, "Hey, is there a magic for success in Hollywood? Do want the secret sauce? Unwavering belief. Total commitment. Rigorous work."If you don't have a Vine account, you may want to get one just to follow Koppelman. (Disclosure: I'm not affiliated with Vine or Koppelman.)

Friday, June 5, 2015

If you're a writer and you're having trouble staying motivated, focused and you're being constantly interrupted by selfish people who don't take your writing seriously, then The Tenants is the novel (1971) and film (2005) for you.

If you want examples of two writers who take their writing extremely seriously, then read this book and watch the film. The novel is a page turner and the film, which is a great adaption of the novel, should be a cult classic for writers.

Here's the plot summary from IMDB:

In
an abandoned tenement, an African-American militant writer and a Jewish
novelist develop a friendship while struggling to complete their
novels, but inner tension rises between the two.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

After I recently read in Secret Lives of GREAT AUTHORS that Balzac often wrote for fifteen hours per day, drank fifty cups of Turkish coffee per day, and practiced, as Deida recommends in The Way of the Superior Man, non-ejaculatory orgasms (It works!), I found my copy of Lost Illusions and re-read my dog-eared pages. I re-discovered some very interesting things. For example:

Print is to manuscripts what the stage is to an actress - it brings to light both beauties and defects; it may kill, or it may bring it to life; a flaw leaps to the eye, and so does a finely expressed idea. p. 376

And if you think that's interesting, check this out. I ordered my used copy of Lost Illusions from Amazon, and coincidentally, the copy I received from Amazon, was the very same copy that I borrowed from the New York public library - with my dog-ears intact.